Optimisation of concrete sleeper design for heavy haul operated railway track by non-linear finite element and empirical studies

Concrete sleeper is one of the major railway track components and it has been successfully applied by the railway authorities around the world for over 60 years. As part of Australian railway’s North South Corridor track strengthening strategy in 2005, the new type of medium duty and heavy duty prestressed concrete sleepers have been designed based on the outcomes of a new innovation of the track condition and technical design parameters. As the process of technical evaluation and design fine tune of the newly designed concrete sleepers, a nonlinear finite element analysis model is created. This model includes the 3-dimensional concrete sleeper, steel tendons/reinforcements in the concrete sleeper and ballast layer underneath the sleeper. In this paper, the outcomes from the innovation of track condition and the determination of design parameters are presented. Moreover, some technical suggestions based on results from the numerical study and empirical studies are addressed